6. Coronavirus

“Oh wait, and I have…” Cass hauls himself off the bed to his bookshelf. He takes something in his palm and presents it to me.
It’s the dragonfly earrings.

My period comes. There are pimples across my lower back, I am sweaty and I am empty; exhausted from the drive cross country and a weekend of wasted. He talks mostly about sex and lovers. I didn’t look at him when I drove away, I looked at the moon.

Now, the coronavirus. The madness of the world. It’s all through the media. Back in this world it’s hard to escape the media. The media need to be quarantined.

We’re taking the minute drive from the supermarket home. Out the window there’s an old man with white and wiry hair that whips out; he’s a shorter, fluffier version of Tony. “God get your hair cut,” Dad grumbles towards the man.
“Why” I ask.
“Because it’s too long,” he says, exasperated.

Where the sun shines through the fence there are ladies putting a rose bush into place. “Still can’t get toilet paper from the IGA,” one comments.
“Oh can’t you.”
“Nup. Still sold out. But at least the kids aren’t coming this weekend.”
“But you got enough?”
“One roll.”
“You want a roll?”
“That’d be great.”

Alison’s front left bearing broke driving back into Melbourne. She’s parked across from Sophie and Reahan’s in East Brunswick.
Back in the city, surrounded by people, I see queues to the supermarket, and everything sold out. And it’s only just beginning.
There’ll be no housesitting with corona. There will be time. I feel dead inside.
The sounds outside are horrendously loud. The garbage truck goes forever, it drives fast and tips the million bins full of a million bottles from the million apartments around me. It’s still dark. 6:01. I’m wide awake.

I know this sex. My style is his style. We’re like an old married couple who were never truly compatible.

Saturday night: 40% of conversations were coronavirus conversations. A wild Saturday means a slow Monday with Saturday night’s conversations still with me.

A Hinge date. The coronavirus effect. We talk easily and I would have kissed him, but I felt his awkwardness and mirrored it.

Usually I walk into Highpoint and curl up on the inside. But on Wednesday arvo it’s dead empty and it makes shopping for my bridesmaids’ dress likeable.

I wake and read the news of the quick demise of the world we know; more countries shutting down, ‘Australia Declares State of Emergency’ for 300 confirmed cases. But I’m not scared. I have nothing to lose. Although, I need space to create. I need my own room. I need money for Alison.
With wines Soph yells to my lack of empathy. But it’s not lack of empathy, I know that. In the heat Sophie says I’m small minded. But I’m not small minded, I know that. For she talks of people over the road while I wonder about all. Nature, our world, our children. The possibilities, the grief, and how grief comes with possibilities. We were complaining about the climate, and now we’re given a shake up, and we complain again. We’re all in this together. And together we need change and change means the unknown and the unknown scares people.
This life, that life, caught between as the world continues its spiral into lockdown. People told to return home. Where can I go? Castlemaine? Seize this time? Bunker down? Finish Backpacker? The next step will come.

It’s a balmy night, an Indian summer. I sweat and I smell. The Hinge date tells me, “We need human contact.” We walk around and around and speak of this strange world.
I don’t want the world to return to ‘normal.’
When I leave the city it’s raining and it feels right. It’s time for isolation; time to release my soul; time for Mother Nature to shine.

The sound of Cheryl’s licking; Dad’s comment about not parking my car behind his; No inspo to edit; The footy; Eating processed foods and getting more pimples; Cheryl’s barking at the gate making me want to kick her.
I’m afraid Dad’s temper is wearing off on me, or it’s in me.
I’m tight lipped. Recovering from teenage years. Forever alone. Taking comfort in death.

Back home, this house, where, in a sense, it all began. It’s March 22nd. News unfolds by the hour. I pull weeds and find my feet in Monopoly deal. Mum and I have wine with our lunch. Iso in Mildura. Deep down I had foreseen that I wouldn’t return to Broome this year. I hadn’t known why. I could never have known why.

I dream of toilet paper. I wake to Mum’s hair dryer; she’s on the phone to Andy talking loudly about state border’s closure and what ‘non-essential travel’ entails. Then she’s on the phone to her boss; they’ll still offer support to the children of parents in ‘essential services.’ Art is essential, isn’t it? Is a trip to Melbourne ‘essential’?

Driving into town, wondering what it was: I don’t like myself atm, all my executions are all intensity and opinions.
Now, I’m on the back lawn with a small joint, lying on Ash’s red blanket. A small dust storm blows across the paddock and through the veggie garden. An ant crawls into the bowl besides me as one appears over the edge. Today I enter into my final edit but first I need to keep lying in the sunshine.

Yes I love this: whether you earn $150,000 or $50,000 you get the same support. But then maybe people will freak out because they can’t waste money on shit? Because advertising has taught us to dream to always plan ahead and live in a hypothetical future. Corona might be a blow to us personally but is it a blow to humanity? That day, in the future, in reflection, history will tell.

Clouds this morn, out of bed at 9am, carrot cake for breakfast, cbf with editing but then smash three hours’ worth. Somewhere amongst this I begin to understand just how blocked I’ve been and how little of my heart I give. There needs to be no shame in vulnerability. Working through emotional blockages. Be open and honest. Share feelings. HEALTH2020.

Thank god for Sunshine. At least I can look out to a clear-skied breeze, the sprinkler on the lawn, and a veggie garden. But the house is cold and the bigger picture—social repercussions—still in my mind.

Friday, puffy face, tight belly, Elton John playing, two lambs born, readying for Melbourne for the weekend that would’ve been the wedding. Boo this is boring. The yin and the yang. This brewing conversation. Mum using loudspeaker when talking on phone is the most annoying thing in the whole world.

Comma and Tuna drive off in the car and I’m left on the footpath with the parents. I digest my upbringing and the urge to make everything a joke, like my family always did. When I get nervous and awkward, I look away. But when I brave myself to look, I always see more than I predict.

It’s hard to see outside of a hole when you’re so deeply in it.

A bad mood strikes just outside of Mildura—Tom the farter is being an arsehole about burping. I withdraw by the time we’re home and I don’t want to be there.
None of my family know who I truly am.
Smoking out front I think of properly knowing what I want to create with life, and to do that. On the fold out couch in the middle room I’m reading a Kill Your Darlings article on the author’s friend dying when I feel a tickle on my shoulder. I expect to see a moth but it’s a caterpillar.

Mum keeps interrupting me when I’ve told her a million times I’m working. She never asks what I’m working on.

Skin erupted again.

I’m feeling fragile and Tom’s being an arsehole again, yelling at me about burping again. I’m a teenager again. I hate him again. I hate my family. I can’t stay here. I want to go. There is nowhere to go.

Mum’s on the phone to Emma, she’s telling her what everyone’s been doing up here in iso. When she gets to me, Mum falters, asks herself, “What has Sarah been doing?”
“Reading?” Emma offers.
Mum says, “That, and yoga.”

I do Yoga with Adriene: Releasing the Artist Within. I dream of land. An alternative future. Of land shared with others, our own community, off-grid, with family. A family of my own. I see space, with people, a warm kitchen, fresh veg, family, my family, a write and workspace, trees, small kisses. Write, I want to right.

April Fools. Only four people have died of corona so far but still it dominates the news with everyone in iso. But I like iso, with its comforting rain, editing, fresh bread and soup, vinyasa, waking and not wondering to the day, not having to worry I should be doing something else.

Outside there are weeds and prickles but it’s neat, green and flowery. I’m hot editing in the sun—what’s a word for bringing forth?

Things are much easier to explain using speech.

At the supermarket everyone eyes you from of a distance, sidesteps you out of respect, or is it fear? A random lady walking by with toilet paper in her trolley, whispers to us, “There’s still a couple left on the shelf.” We quicken our pace to the far aisle where the shelves have sat empty for a month. We take one of the last packets.

April third. 27 today. I’ve had a good sleep; the growing dark takes me smoothly to 7:30. We don’t talk about corona or the news anymore. I look forward to yoga. I make fluffy pancakes, sort Job Active, and edit some chapters. Later, dressed in sunset hues, there’s a grunting ram, Tom and Luna playing golf, Andy, stylish in his ripped shorts and beanie, lighting the fire.

Monday: fresh week. Haven’t washed hair since last Mon or Tues. It’s the 6th day of new sourdough culture—so far so perfect. Have also made healthy sweet slice. Pizza dough. Tomato chutney. I do the type of clean you don’t notice but you feel, dusting and arranging. Then there’s Yoga for Vulnerability with Adriene—the first thing up on my screen and just what I’d needed; to feel myself, my breathing, open my heart to the sky.

When it’s between Monday and Thursday I tell people that what day it is doesn’t matter. When it’s Sunday I tell people it’s Sunday and so on Sunday I chill.

Eighth of April. Isolation day something. Wake up, feed the culture, get soaking some oats, make another healthy slice, yoga, repot plants. Out the front I stretch, close my eyes, slowly fold over. I want presence, vulnerability, more cooking, more fires, love. Love could maybe start with Mum.

Soph’s being interviewed about the website she created, the one I wrote a few things for, and she mentions my name as her writer/photographer friend who’s been travelling the West coast.

Speaking to Bruce on the phone he’s poetic, telling me about the roadblocks, how his family are ‘lazy,’ how he never drank or smoked.

I make my first loaf of sourdough and we stand around the kitchen at 9:30pm eating it with honey and jam. In bed, the thought of people alone or feeling sad makes me feel sad too.

I make hot cross buns, more sourdough and peanut butter slice. I organise some online journal and edit some Backpacker. Reading a news article, I mentally note the doughnut system in Netherlands: the minimum we need to lead a good life with housing, sanitation, energy, education, healthcare, gender equality, income and political voice. A life of good food and clean water.

“God it’s a boring day,” Dad says, sitting in front of the telly with Luna. We’re in Castlemaine; a Good Friday not to be remembered. Three hot cross buns and one point five muffins later, there’s a heavy Sarah who misses friends and is tired of the media.
There were three new cases today.
Easter continues. Depresso. I pick my skin/chin and now it’s red raw and sore. At the IGA a lady tells me I can buy a pot of parsley for $3.50 instead of an unnecessarily large and wilted bunch for $2.90.
Why do they make the bunches so big? Is flour gluten? I want a verandah with a bath on it and trees around. I say I’m ready for a relationship, but I’m not. I know what I need to do.

Oh there were sheep in the paddock

Sunshine overhead

We’re driving to Mildura

What’d we do instead?

Oh there was a sheep in the fridge

The Milky Way outside

Wasn’t meant to be here

Surprise

Oh it was ten in the morning then it’s a quarter to three

I’m getting angry, or could be hungry?

Tom’s on the computer and he’s working away

But guess it’s good to get paid

A lot

Felt heavy and a bit lost today. Not getting enough done with jumping between things. Then there’s my writing, like a piece of children’s art; cut and paste, cut and paste.

There’s an absolute plague of bugs, a summer-feeling night in April. I read my notes from last year and the year before. Again and again I’m talking about health, my diet, the smoking and the wine. It is boring. Like this problem with weed. Repetitive. Smoking in excess. Being antisocial. Clinging to how pensive and melancholic the experience makes me. And with weed I tell myself it’s the last time, but it’s not the last time until it’s all gone. So I sneak around and smoke it. Then I’m hard on myself, touching my skin and closing myself off while considering that my mindset isn’t helping my skin, that my mindset has bad energy flowing through my body, coming out on my face.

Eavesdropping on Tom calm and rational when making error.

More people still dying of hunger than coronavirus.

Would always rather not do yoga but never regret doing yoga.

It’s in the family, this repeating ourselves.

Was doing Yoga with Adriene when Andy came knocking with a surprise: I’m cooking next week. No, I tell him, I can’t do that.

Day something of ‘quarantine,’ the day I go somewhere beyond Broken Hill and cook for the cunts. At home, I wake at 6:30 and when I go around the verandah to the kitchen the sky’s bright pink. Back in bed, with too-sweet cashew milk coffee, I look through my ‘website’ and paste the link to Insta.
We cross the Darling in Wentworth and Andy explains the problem with those taking the water in Queensland rages on. They say it’s Chinese owned, Chinese growing cotton. Thing is, whoever it is up north, they had good rain that filled their dams, meaning they currently don’t need to drain the Darling, at least not until the water dries out. Then they can take it all over again. And so they will.
After Broken Hill, we passed no other cars either direction. We passed goats, sheep and random hills. A couple of stations jutted off the dirt road. “It’s pretty outback,” Andy says of the red-rock barren property we come to.
The sheep are waiting in their pens and we see the old cockies; wealthy station owners who complain about drought while driving around in their Land Rovers and flying around in their helicopters. An old kind-of handsome man with a ponytail (the story goes he wasn’t cutting it until the drought was over) came and said G’day, but he wasn’t keen to talk. From past experience I know his elusiveness is not corona-driven.
Andy sets up camp and I look out to the red rocky plains sparkling like Ackaringa, the station of the Painted Desert. I go to visit the ewes waiting in their yards. Inside the shearing shed, it smells like a shearing shed and I fight for reception but there’s nothing. No Google recipes to help me.
The kitchen has fabulous old pieces of furniture that would be worth a lot in Melbourne and considered trash out here. The new oven and all the pots and pans and cutlery are wrapped in plastic. My room has concrete floors and a single stretcher-style bed, bugs swarm the fluorescent light when I’m wanting to read my book. I’m a little drunk on beer.
I’m sitting with Andy on the back of his ute when the headlights came. Two girls get out of a ute and their thongs become bogged in the botched water tank next to the kitchen.
I drink more beer and watch Corey make plastic-looking burgers for dinner. The Tasmanian girls, who got their thongs bogged, ask if there’d be judgment if they have another. I tell them No, I’m too caught up in myself. But I consider their swarms of cellulite and their diet and I remember Tom’s advice, “When in doubt, add sugar.”
After six beers I brush my teeth and squat behind a rusted caravan to pee under the blanket of stars. All night I kept waking to check the time; I want to get it over with.

It’s still dark and I’m in the kitchen. Corey comes in to assure me he’s got me covered by sharing some of his wisdom about making things as easy as possible, like “baking paper’s your friend.”
As Corey directs me we talk briefly about Broome, where he went from his honeymoon. I ask him how he found the experience. “Dunno,” he says, “just find the Chinese-blackfella thing a little backwards.”
After morning smoko Corey continues to share his self-taught, self-believing wisdom with me. He dropped out of school at 12 and now, in his 40s, is illiterate. Although he’s made a lot of money with his shearing contracting. To Corey, life is about money. When he’s telling me about Cassie’s (his wife’s) photography (which is brilliant) he says, “She’s gunna make it a $100,000 business…she’s got $50,000 worth of stuff.” In response, I feign awe. I feel flattered when he offers me any toilet paper if I ever need it.

A fierce mood this morning mixed with apprehension to the day ahead. Exhausted from yesterday’s 15 hours, now I have to do it again. Alone in the kitchen I go through the boxes and bags and boxes and bags: caged eggs, plastic soup mixes with veggies, everything to be cooked with meat. I stare out the window, the whistle of the wind, the dust of the sheep’s hooves moving through the stock yards, the men calling out, an old fridge rattling. There’s a willy willy in the distance: My music plays, it’s Jesse reminding me What we need is a new system.
When Corey comes to collect afternoon smoko, he’s covered in sheep’s blood and winks at me. Corey winks a lot. He tells me it was meant to be a five day job, then it was three, now maybe only two—they aren’t pulling in the numbers they thought they would. I ask, “What, like, so the sheep’s, like, body are out there somewhere?”
“Yeah, wouldn’t find em in this country.”
He leaves with his bum crack reliably on show and I go to the portable building block toilets. Catching a glimpse in the small mirror I’m reminded of my skin and how today’s pessimism is not helped by picking at all the shitty food; garlic bread, my burnt spag bol, packet mix carrot cake, 2pm beer.
At 5pm Corey comes to visit with more beer. He sits on one of the dirty black tubs, scoping out why I don’t want to do the job. I’m not as bad as I think, he tells me. But I keep thinking how I don’t care, how I’m good at lots of things, how that means shit. But to Corey I give an “organic” excuse, explaining I’m the kind who is mindful of what they eat and support. It comes off clumsy. He tells me to put whatever I need for myself on the list so then maybe I’ll eat. He later tells Andy I must be so white because I don’t eat meat. But I haven’t been hungry.
From the kitchen I listen in on the team’s dinner table conversations. “That other aboriginal bloke from Broken Hill,” who is skinny, with a sleeve with 1994 inscribed in it, adding to his alluring demeanour and stoner habits, is talking of an old roustabout and goes, “She’s a fuckin keen cunt age…fuckin wanted a threesome n stuff aye.” As the tales transgress, another bird 1994 talks of was waiting for him in his room with her legs spread wide open.
Cooking has finished for another day. Aaron, who has 2.5 teeth at an angle on the side of his mouth and who has been friendliest to me, gives me some of his chop-chop. I still can’t stand still or eat.

Wednesday 22nd April. It grows colder before sunrise. My hands are cracked from so many dishes. The team have all left for another station. I stand out in the plains looking to electricity poles disappearing, to where? I wouldn’t want to walk and find out. “Not in this country.”
The moon hangs above, there’s a star close by; the start of the astrological New Year. Another new beginning. I go searching for reception. The sheep are leaving the pen area, creating dust in different directions.
The day passes with striving for presence, alternating between editing, food prep and cleaning. The bathrooms are a muddy nightmare and Corey had told me to use chemicals so it smells nice and clean.

It’s 5:30am and I’m on the water, not able to stomach coffee. Everyone’s a little dusty from the night before, me included. Matty’s at the urn and 1994 Trent, with his eyes half closed, tells him to Hurry the fuck up cunt. “Fuck of cunt,” Matty replies with eyes half closed. Lyndon, who has his eyes half closed and is standing behind 1994 Trent, grumbles, “Cunt.” Then the conversation then goes a little something like this:
“Cunt.”
“Cunt.”
“Cunt.”
“Cunt.”
“Cunt.”
They leave and more cunts come back to me with memories from the night. 1994 Trent, the “other Aboriginal bloke from Broken Hill,” had sat beside me and Andy and relayed an interaction he had with some bitch at the Whitecliffs pub that afternoon. The bitch had said to him, “You wanna hear a joke?”
“Ah, sure,” he’d agreed.
“Two blackfellas are in a car. Who’s driving?”
“Ahh…”
“The police officer.”
Trent tells that he was too shocked to properly reply but says to Andy and me, “it ain’t funny aye.”
Fuck no.

Back at Mum’s home I make pancakes and Anzac biscuits and prepare more sourdough. I’m doing Yoga with Adriene and Tom’s squatting flies in the kitchen. “Cunts,” he says, out of breath.
His crazy moods are like mine.

Corona still dominates news but now it’s more about other countries than Australia—although hopefully we don’t breathe out too quickly. I’d say it’s wise to remain lowkey for the winter.

Voicemail from Bruce: Good morning, good afternoon, and we’ll see you later tonight or yesterday afternoon.

Something in my diet is giving me a face rash. Peanut butter?

Not thinking of possibilities, not excited about the past, I’m content. Until I get a phone call.
Cassie and I barely exchange a word on the drive out. When we get there, I recognise the filthy property—the last one I cooked at all those years go.
As we’re unpacking the trailer, one of the lesbians ignores me. When I ask her name, she gives it to me like I’ve done something wrong.
Out in the freezing dark I crouch on the ground and see a ginormous shooting star (or satellite). I cringe to footsteps and assume the two shearers can’t see me out there as they unzip their pants and start pissing: “Fuck them hamburgers go orright don’t they,” one of them says as he farts midstream.
Shivering in bed in my freezing donger with no light and no friends. In Myanmar, a palm reader had looked at my hand and said I’ll live a long diseased life. Here, at Wintong, I think I understand what he meant.

On Wednesday I wear my London-bought bright orange pants, for Cassie. At smoko there’s no water in the toilets or their sinks and so I go to Cassie and tell her like it’s a question. “Well tanks empty then?” she says, like I’m stupid. I don’t know I tell her, making Charlene, the shearer who was rude to me when I first arrived, snicker. I glare at her, to see if she has the balls to do it to my face, but she doesn’t look back. Then I’m crying, I want to go home. And my swelling wrist is the perfect excuse.

I was in Mildura this time a year ago too. Today, I am so grateful to be here. The swelling of my tendonitis has gone down a little, but my hands are still stiff and sore with deep burs blistering. Now I can’t see my future. It is another blank canvas before me. Can I choose the paints? The picture? I will start slowly; meditating, listening to my body, not rushing, wanting time. Needing time.

A new era: I make a tea with macadamia milk instead of a coffee. I briefly lay in my low-lying bed with my Suku sheets and write Holly an email about editing. The heater sucks the oxygen from the room. I hear Mum and Andy talk about the frost outside. My two guitars are around me. The vines out the window are Autumn—yesterday there had been the perfect yellow light and then it had started raining.
Slouching against my pillows I force myself from bed to put away my bedding from roustabouting and prepare a sit-on-the-floor desk in the middle of the rug. Another edit seems tedious, but I need to keep pace.
Tom’s huffing and puffing at his computer and I’m huffing and puffing at mine. I rejig my plans and start with meditation. I’m not embarrassed by Tom walking through the room as I breathe through my irrational fear.

It’s after 7:30 when I get out of bed—couldn’t get to sleep until at least 11:30. I had been thinking of Backpacker and now I’m thinking of Normal People.
The kitchen is clean and cosy and when I peak back into my middle room it looks the same. I love my space here, it’s all I need right now. I get back into bed with a tea and read over yesterday’s edits. The concept of time is changing around the world. The fast paced stressful world we had lived.

Without pressure, am I getting more done?

It’s hard to get things done when Mum’s home talking on the phone. Now she’s shouting to Emma on Facetime and when I walk up Emma says, “Yeah what did you do today Sarah?” It makes me so angry and I want to snap. Instead I walk off. Because I want to evolve. To unburden myself of their ideas.

This morning I did Sarahdough and vinyasa flow. Words are on my mind. I’m not checking my phone so much because I know there won’t be any messages. And there’s not, really.
I’m driving down the San Mateo avenue extension, the grapevines are orange, and the light is gold on Bruce’s pnji pnji and the Broome feather earring dangling from the rear view mirror. It’s been a good day. And now with my new computer, I can play. And I want to keep playing forever.

Tom sings silly songs and I join. Then I meditate. Then Tom comes and asks what’s for lunch. I tell him I don’t know. Then I try not to think into the future.
Spoke with Bruce and Kamali. I miss them both. I want to return to Western Australia and live with the ocean and forest and a good community, in a house in the trees with incredible people, a family, a creating space, plants, veg garden, cooking.

When I was a teenager, when social media was a baby, in my room I’d play with photos, frames, decorations, magazines, creating my wall of fame. I’d edit photos taken on a camera the size of a brick and store them on floppy disks. I would buy black and white film and take photos of my friends laughing. Sometimes, when I’d get them developed, I’d experiment with white borders.

A blue sky Sunday. Twenty degrees. I do an hour of yoga through midday, mind and body working together. I don’t want to be here long, not once the leaves have fallen leaving vines outside my window bare. But I remain thankful for this guilt-free time to create, to my time with Mum and Andy and Tom, to the Autumn weather in northwest Victoria, to the fires, the sourdough, the yoga, the veggie garden. Then again, I am restless and conflicted to how to pass this time confined to my home state. For now, I’ll go eat salmon and veggies for lunch with Mum and Tom.

Gavin gives drunken honesty: “How did you end up so alternative and Emma so straight?”

Time is when she’ll shine.

Love, she says. Yes, love.

Getting organised for my fresh week at home when Andy calls; they need a cook. Today. 2pm pick up.

A pimply face still stares back from the mirror. I focus on it. A bad mood bites—I don’t want to go out there, I want to write and sort my photos.
But I need money.

It was six or seven hours on the road. We didn’t talk much again, Cassie was mainly on her phone, swerving all over the road, although there were no cars from Wilcannia to Whitecliffs.
We unpacked all the boxes and I retreated early to bed. When I’d wake in the night, in the single, lone Cookie room, I’d roll to my back and tell myself, Breathe.
Calm took me through the morning, preparing breakfast and smoko. But still, with this adventure, I’m done. The long hours alone, the poor conditions, the unpaid time spent travelling.
A shearer’s cook is a shit job.
At dinner, the mood lifts as the dishes arrive. It’s around this time I change my mind on everything: maybe this isn’t so bad?
I lay horizontal and read Tim Winton. This change is not dramatic, it’s silent.

“This week has pushed me over the edge,” I say to Mum. “I need a Melbourne feed.”
But money makes the world go around, she tells me.
“But does it, really?”
Then she tells me Cassie told Corey who told Andy who told Mum who told me I’m doing a brilliant job.
I consider this and reply, “I know, but it means nothing to me…because what price am I paying for that?”
After, my mental state grows worse when I learn my ride back to town had a blue with Cassie and left abruptly. Without me.
The rest of the team has disappeared. I light the donkey but half an hour later the water’s still cold. I give in, splash my parts and face. My hair is so greasy. I’m alone. Furious. Screaming. Crying. Annoyed for not having listened to instinct. For always listening to my mind.
I’d do anything to be living a normal life in Melbourne.

I stumble from my cookie room and squat under the icy stars. How, after all my time of not using a toilet, have I not managed to work out how to pee in a way that doesn’t splash up my feet or that I don’t have to move around to not create a river flowing underfoot?

Friday morning of the longest week, we leave in the dark for another station. The muddy road is bumpy. Leeroy, the wool press, rides up front. “Feel like we’re in the middle of nowhere,” he says.
We are, Cassie tells him.
Curled up in the back, I think of these moments as scenes in a movie.
“This could be a movie,” Leeroy says.
A funny one, Cassie tells him.

At the station, Cassie comes into the kitchen for a knife. “Just accidently killed a sheep” she says.


The cocky comes and we talk about climate, how a ‘drought’ comes every five to ten years. “They reckon the worst drought was early 1800s,” he says.
“That’s interesting timing,” I say.
He leaves. I sit at the end of the table reading more Tim Winton. The room smells like paint, the low afternoon sun on my face as my feet sweat in merino socks. I want to wash my hair. I want to wear clothes that make me feel beautiful. I want to eat good food, do yoga, be with people who make me laugh, go to places that make me think good things. I want my friends, and old loves, and the toastiness of a small city bar in winter. I want to play music, play guitar, go out walking, breathe oxygen from the trees.

Dad returns my call: “Sarah…yep…you called…um…how are you?”
“Shit,” I say.
“Yep,” he replies.

The world is in chaos. Today, restrictions lift—we can have twenty people at a house—but corona is yesterday’s news. America is at war with themselves. Riots across major cities, looting, burning, terrorising. George Floyd’s death the tipping point.
A few wines in, sitting on the armchair in Castlemaine, watching the news, I blurt out that I just want to see him, Donald Trump, dead. “SARAH!” Tom exclaims. I bite my tongue. Are there any words to describe just how sick he is? Maybe one day there’s be a new word for it: Trump.
The next morning, I wake curious and check Insta for all the black squares, despite already knowing all my friends would feel this way. I can’t control my frustration, my unjustified, supposedly-lacking-empathy frustration. I shut off my phone, I can’t look more at social media today.

I wake in the night to a sharp bang—the stand in Comma’s spare room falling down. I can’t get back to sleep for another hour and think about Black Lives Matter and the choice of words used in the campaign. More than ever I need to meditate, breathe, embody the calm I feel 50% of the time, and smile. When I wake again in the spare room there is no excitement nor motivation to work.

After the masked protest in the CBD came Grill’d with Michael and Josh. Back at Comma’s came the personal demons, that old story, with tears and ominous thoughts and another fold out bed.
Comma and Frankie go to Castlemaine and Tom comes home from his night out at 11am. Even though he can barely speak and dozes on the couch, I am glad to have company to make my suffocation in the city not quite as depressing.

Queens Birthday. A walk in “Prinny,” as Emma calls it, with Comma and Frankie. After, they go out again and I stretch with Adriene before returning to my fixation on my face. I’m afraid I’m making it permanent. I continue (the thought of) experimenting with my mind, working on self-love.

This morning was frosty; Frankie was shivering. I bounded us up in our fur blankets and turned the heater on. She snuggled next to me as I edited. Later, I see Cass. We’re walking to my car when he tells me he’s in a relationship with his housemate. We do what we only know to do; drink beers in his small Carlton courtyard, smoke cigarettes and run out of things to talk about. I catch a $23.17 Uber home and stress to my reflection. Uncomfortable on the fold out bed, when I Google I find the information I’ve spent years searching for: my gut. The problem with my skin is my gut. I can feel it in my gut. Or it is, I can’t feel it in my gut because it’s swollen and sore with carbohydrates and refined sugar? To heal it takes time, breaking habits and creating new ones. More time than I think, more time than I’ve given it before.

Thursday. Prepare for Castlemaine. Had woken again with a heavy stomach from sugar and carbs and I look at my acne and cellulite in the mirror.

Standing in Dad’s kitchen, Tom asks how Emma’s was. I tell him it was a townhouse; he tells me I judge a lot.

The growing nationalism of the world makes me want to live it out off-grid until the dictators die die die.

Until we can receive with an open heart, you’re never really giving with an open heart.

When I’m asked, “What do you usually do for a job?” I confirm they’re talking money. I tell the wavering story, giving different parts to different people.

Success is walking failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm – Winston Churchill

A news segment about Scott Morrison condemning BLM protests. The next news segment Scott Morrison confirms 10,000 at the football. Scott Morrison says Australia has no history of slavery. Scott Morrison is selfish.

The art of being yourself.

There’s that deep sadness and loneliness. In a way, everything has come crashing down. It was a night with friends. The love of hyped up conversations. The wide eyes and grinding jaws, talking about things we’ll never follow through with once daylight and regret set in. I withdrew at 4am to go cry in the big bed in the smaller room of the Fitzroy bnb. In the morning, the clean-up was gruelling with all the bottles and all the cigarette butts in the graffitied alley.

Three days after the Saturday my eyes still feel puffy and I make a tea with soy milk although I was trying to stop milk. I have the lady in Word reading my story to me. She’s handy.

A vivid dream: out driving in Australia, swimming in big patches of water against sand, hairy times with a full car, but calm with people.

No joke, my chin and cheeks like a pizza. A whole rash of pimples on my lower jaw and across my chin. Hormones unbalanced. Only three days since bad-food gorge. Third day of sitting up the end of Dad’s table listening to Catherine the computer lady speaking my story to me.

The guy on British Grand Designs makes a comment how a community is not a bunch of people who think the same way, but all sorts who give their parts and work together.

Dad has Tino and Louise coming, and the organising makes him tense. It’s time to go.
When I drive out of Castlemaine, I Can’t Help Falling in Love With You plays on the radio.
In Sunshine, the house has junk and half-finished ideas lying around. He mirrors me in black pants and grey hoody. Then we’re talking and talking and I can’t look at him for too long because my skin is so bad. I say a whole lot of things in place of what I really want to say. Like, I think you’re the best.
But I’m used to hiding my feelings.
In bed we hug so tightly and we are so close his heart pounds into mine and all through the night we don’t stop touching but never kissing.
He makes me breakfast in bed and I know I love him in a way that I love only him.

Comforts of Friday with Mia in Geelong in a house all to ourselves. There’s a huge couch and cauliflower soup and hot shower and a new resolution to a new age a new me.

Saturday driving to Torquay Farmers Market the highway is like a carpark edged by ugly modern buildings. By the ocean front we join the people walking and I’m underwhelmed by the scenery—spoiled from Western Australia. By night we eat blue cheese and roast aubergines and brussels sprouts and drink G&T’s and wines. I fall straight into a deep sleep dreaming of reading Boy Swallows Universe and being somewhere in Asia where it’s light in the middle of the night and some guy asks about my writing.

On Sunday morning I put Neil Young on the record player and decide to spend the day flittering; being selfishly Sarah. We get out of pyjamas at 3pm and put on puffer jackets to walk along the river. The air is clean, crisp, the light winter-soft. It feels good and I feel hope, although I don’t know what about or where the hope comes from.

Monday morn the road between Geelong and Castlemaine is misty as the light grows. Coburg is listed as a corona ‘hotspot.’ Fucking great. And now my second cousin is posting racist shit on FB.
22nd June. It’s near dark and raining. We drink whiskey. I feel positive despite Victoria’s new cases meaning travel may be off limits for some time and plans are once again unknown. I want a home, but I don’t know where, so for now I’ll make my caravan home with photos and decorations and good plant based foods and clothes that feel soft against my skin.

Another new financial year approaches and I tell myself I will start with new non-habits. Less phone, more yoga, better food. And I will laugh. Oh how I will laugh. No matter what is to come, I will laugh. Because laughter changes everything.

There are no leaves on the grapevines, although they’re now blocked by shutters that keep in the mild-warmth. It’s gloomy. I get my period in the night. I reconsider how I saw my future and decide I don’t want to be alone in this cold house. I look at Fairy Floss and decide I don’t want that either. We’re on the rise with positive cases—41 today. Two days ago, when the number was 33, the host commented “huge number” and I wanted to tell the host to Shut up, just shut up.

Stunning drive from Mildura to Castlemaine with the long winter shadows, the tree lined road doused in shades of orange, the hills beyond the highway dusky purple. This is Victoria: my home, my family, my friends.

It feels like night by 4:30. The cold bites. The bright lights and the pop music at Kmart don’t break my mood. I overeat falafel. I have a shower and the birthday tears begin.
I know this of me in the city, I have been here before. I won’t go back.

Thirty-two.
Single.
A rash of pimples.
Winter weight.
Gaining flexibility with yoga.
Understanding I have allergies.
And a need to live in a warm climate by the sea.
And I’m a writer.
Who thinks a lot. And is growing, ready for her own family.
I do vinyasa flow and it rains through the townhouse window. I begin research on natural skin and hair products.

It turned out to be a night with lamps and gin and wine and green curry and looking at my friends thinking how lucky I am because Oh how I love them. Now, I’m chained to bed, hung over on gin. I was meant to have a night in Sunshine, but he cancelled because he wasn’t feeling up to it. I sobbed when I hung up the phone—because it was my birthday and why do you cancel on people’s birthdays.

Cold and dreary Melbourne, alone in an apartment, a long, hot shower in the bathroom with no windows and heavy steam. I clasp my hands to a Namaste and close my eyes. I centre in on the future because this, where I am at, this is not a good place. The city folk seem flat and uninspired. I open my eyes and shudder to my reflection. I close my eyes again and I’m not here anymore. My home is elsewhere, away from my loves, but I still visit, barefoot and salty. In the mirror I return to the cellulite (no cardio and too much sugar) and the pimples (a hormone imbalance—my sick gut). I close my eyes. I want to keep them closed.
This is the Melbourne I love; this is the Melbourne I hate.

The Sunday is the aftermath of “should we get a bag” two nights running. Last night, six of us who were strangers in the afternoon and friends by early morning, enjoyed the early days of Wilson Street. Sure, it was fun, but when I’d go into the bathroom I’d squat down with my head in my hands, rising to stare at my pimples staring back. I’m breaking. I broke.

It was a grey Melbourne week, and now to Castlemaine and the cold country nights. With projects and hobbies. My life unknown. I’m trapped in the state and more lockdowns are coming. Social media is talking about the racism in lockdown of public housing towers. Dad grunts at the TV. He goes from nine news to ABC news. But it’s the same shit. The negativity. The volume. The obsessive coverage of corona.

It takes 66 days to break a habit.

July 8th. Melb’s six week lockdown begins at midnight. I leave Castlemaine; blue skies and bare trees out my window. I drive into a freezing fog that takes me up the state. In Koorlong, Mum is engrossed in Netflix and Wikipedia. She doesn’t much acknowledge me. But here I am. For at least six weeks. There will be loneliness and there will be wondering. But we need this. I need this.

My middle room was clean and fresh but still I struggled to find comfortable sleeping positions. I wake to a sharp peach light on the mantle. I don’t have my phone, I don’t need the time. I make a hot water and lemon. When I open some shutters there’s shades of pink through the growing morning. Shepherd’s warning.
I miss seeing sunrises.
I light my peridot candle, put on my leopard print hat, and place my plants around the dining table to make my workspace cosier. I try write Cambodia. I do morning yoga and plan the deeper cleanse of the coming weeks. I will do more yoga. I will eat plant based. I will renovate the camper. I will strum the guitar badly. I’ll save for land. I’ll immerse myself in photos.
I feel the early stages of a deep shift. But here, today, it starts with a profound realisation:
I will write again.
Because there’s still so much more to come.

2020

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